LCS Playoff Weekend

It's finally here! The culmination of 10 exciting weeks of professional League of Legends play starts this weekend. In both European and North American Regions, the first round of playoffs begins friday morning.

 In North America, the six teams to make it to the playoffs are Curse, TSM, CLG, Dignitas, Vulcun Command, and Good Game University. The first round may prove to be the most exciting matches due to the fact the teams are playing for a spot in the LCS Summer Season. The match ups for round one are Dignitas vs. GGU and Vulcan Command vs. CLG. The winner of each match will go on to face Curse and TSM in the semifinals respectively, and they will guarantee their spot in the summer season. The losers move to the Summer Promotion Tournament happening in May where they will have one last best of 5 match to stay in the LCS.


 On the European side, the six teams making it through are Fnatic, Gambit Gaming, SK Gaming, Evil Geniuses, Against All Authority, and the Copenhagen Wolves. Those teams playing in the first round are Evil Geniuses vs. Copenhagen Wolves, and Against All Authoriy vs. Sk Gaming.

All-Star Preview

At the end of this week, the voting for the Spring Season All-Star tournament ends. Once the voting ends, each region, North America, Europe, Korea, China, and South-East Asia, will have chosen five players from across all professional teams in their respective regions to play in the Spring Season All-Star tournament at the LCS Spring Season Playoffs.

While primarily for show, the all-star game also serves a purpose for the world championship finals later this year. The winning all-star team will give their region an extra berthing spot into the world finals.

How the world finals work is similar to other international competitions such as the FIFA World Cup. Each region is assigned a number of berths for teams from that region to qualify for. The season 2 finals had 3 teams for NA and Europer, 2 for Korea, 2 for China, and 1 each for South East Asia and Taiwan/Hong Kong/ Macau. While it hasn't been announced how many berths will given out in total for this years world finals, each all star team is really hoping to give their region that extra spot.

Earlier today a bracket of the all-star tournament was leaked on Korean eSports website iNVen. The following is a translated version.

LCS Week 9

With only two weeks of matches left in the spring season of the 2013 League of Legends Championship Series, this is crunch time for many of the teams. Three teams have already secured their berth in the spring playoffs while the remaining five teams battle it out for the last three spots.

The three teams already guaranteed to play in the playoffs are Curse Gaming, Team Dignitas, and Team Solomid. The two teams who do not qualify for the spring playoffs will be sent to compete in the LCS Summer promotion tournament where they will have to compete for their right to stay in the LCS.

The LCS Summer Promotion tournament will be a separate tournament from the playoffs where 12 teams will compete for four spots in the LCS Summer Season. The twelve teams chosen will come from three different methods of qualification. Four teams will come from the LCS Spring Season. The two who don't qualify for the playoffs, and the first two teams knocked out of the spring playoffs.
Four teams will come from the League of Legends Ranked 5's Online Ladder. And the final four teams will come from winning various amateur tournaments throughout the spring season including MLG Dallas and IPL6.

Shootmania Launch Tournament

This weekend brings the Shootmania $100,000 launch tournament. On April 10th, the new competitive fps game from Nadeo launches, but 4 days before that, 10 of the best teams in North America and 6 of the best teams in Europe will meet in San Francisco for a chance at the $100,000 prize pool.

Shootmania first started gaining ground when it was featured at IPL5 in Las Vegas in 2012 as well as the Copenhagen Games in 2013. The game was set to be featured at IPL6 in March, but due to financial difficulties, IGN decided to cancel IPL6. Instead Nadeo decided to host their own tournament for the teams who qualified for IPL6.

Hopefully this will be the start of a glorious new eSport.

University of Houston LAN Party

On April 7th, 2013, the University of Houston chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity and the University of Houston CyberSports club will join together to host a LAN party in the Oberholtzer Hall Ballroom.

This will be the first LAN event at the University of Houston in 2013.Participants will be asked to bring their own computers.

There will be four tournaments for the games, League of Legends, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Counter-Strike: Global Assault, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. In order to participate in the tournament one must register through the University of Houston CyberSports Facebook page, or through this link http://tinyurl.com/cwqg7ll

MLG Winter Championship

This spring break, thousands of gamers from across the world came to Dallas, TX for Major League Gaming's 2013 Winter Championship. They competed in three major game titles for over $140,000 in prize money. The three games being played were League of Legends, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

The Call of Duty tournament involved 192 amateur teams playing in a double elimination open bracket, and 12 professional teams playing in a separate championship bracket for a first place prize of $20,000.

This time around, the Starcraft tournament at MLG did not have an open bracket, but instead held the first major tournament for the new Starcraft expansion pack, Heart of the Swarm, in a 32 player single elimination tournament featuring players from Korea, Europe, and North and South America.

The League of Legends portion was actually made up of 3 separate events. The first was a four team tournament featuring four amateur teams competing for a spot in this summers LCS Summer Promotion Tournament, where they will play for a spot in the second half of this year's LCS season.
The second tournament of the weekend was an international exhibition tournament played among 2 North American Teams, Curse and Dignitas, 1 Russian team, Gambit Gaming, and 1 Korean Team, KT Rolster B. The third LoL event this weekend was the weekly LCS matches among the top 8 North American Teams. Here is a preview below:

IPL6 Officially Cancelled!

So less than one month to go before the IGN Pro League 6 event was scheduled to occur, officials from IGN confirmed that the event has been cancelled. In a press release, IGN stated that: